


observer effect

by goukyorin (sashimisusie)



Category: BioShock Infinite
Genre: F/M, Gen, Originally Posted on Tumblr
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-18
Updated: 2015-01-18
Packaged: 2018-03-08 02:42:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3192239
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sashimisusie/pseuds/goukyorin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There one moment, and gone the next. Absent, and not. The very act of observation changes everything.</p>
            </blockquote>





	observer effect

             Comstock raises his head at the sound of a throat being cleared, and immediately startles. The red-haired woman who stands before him is surely a ghost, for Rosalind Lutece has been dead for years. He puts down the pen, sets aside the paper so that the ink can dry without smudging.

             ”You’re supposed to be dead.”

             That statement sounds ridiculous, even to a man as stained in hypocrisy as himself. The sinner may be forgiven, and grace may be granted, but the dead definitely do not walk the Earth. At least, no vision granted to him by the Archangel Columbia has shown him such a thing yet.

             ”For shame, Mister Comstock.” She tilts her chin up, regarding him with a cool blue gaze. The stiffness in her posture translates down her shoulders, travelling down to the surprisingly-delicate hands clasped in front of her waist. “Is that any sort of thing to say to a lady?”

             Comstock smiles, and moves to stand. “I did send flowers first.”

             He himself laid the wreath of white roses on the closed caskets, a bloom far easier to find than the mountain avens that the woman so loved. There is little harm in speaking to her. Ghosts, after all, will tell no tales of times gone past, and confidences shared in secret. For who would believe the whispers of a specter?

             Stepping around the wooden desk, to where the dead Lutece stands before in his office, Comstock stops short of being within arm’s reach. He does not raise his hand to the freckled curve of her cheek, nor does he take her small hands in his much larger ones.

             ”Are you real?” Real, he asks, as if the reality of her being could be quantified and laid out to measure like the pale smoothness of her body beneath his fingertips. Real, he asks, as if that will change the very fact that he had her—and that meddlesome male counterpart of hers—killed.

             ”A sight more real than your Archangel, prophet.” Her tone is clipped, almost brusque in its English accented enunciation. “The next time you wish to murder somebody, I would suggest that you do it yourself if you would rather the other party  _remain_  dead.”

             He turns his gaze away, momentarily ashamed. He took no pleasure in having issued the order, but they had tried to  _steal_  from him. Even those who gave Columbia her wings were corruptible, and the duty to forgive was not  _his_.

             When Comstock looks up next, the room as empty as it once, and always, was.

**Author's Note:**

> Just a little something for [rosalxnd](http://tmblr.co/m0_Hd4G2hjK-rD0OjbcNo9g), and because I needed this in my life.


End file.
